In the old days, one could go to the Arcade, Rex, Liberty or Colonial Theatres to see a movie.  Now you can go to the movies in a new theater in the SS. Works.  Check out Mallorca, Emilionos, and lots of other great places to get a bite to eat. 

My mom worked at the Schiller Club on Jane Street during the weekend evenings to bring in a few extra dollars.  It seems to me that there are a lot of great watering holes in the revised edition of South Side.  I have gone to Club Cafe on 12 Street, especially on Monday nites for the Acoustic Cafe.  I’ve really enjoyed preformances with my friend, also named Sara , but without an “h”.

I like the looks of Ormsby Pool and Rec Center where I swam and was a life guard in my younger days.

Sidney Street  somehow as gotten longer and looks good too. 

Amazing how you can get to Mary Street without going under the trussels on South 27th Street.

That reminds me of taking my brother’s Road Racer, non steerable go
car up half way or more onto Mary Street and riding it down.  I didn’t
have his permission.  What a ride.  I think I crashed it.  Somehow he
and my cousins wrecked the playhouse that my dad built for me in the
backyard.  I guess I was doing a payback. 

Gee I always thought I was an angel; guess I had a bit of the devil in me too. 

That experience was almost as good as riding my bicycle down Kochicko Way (sp?) That was a hill too.  Cobblestones.  I think that is where I broke the axle to my bicycle.  And, and I got a new axle and repaired the bike myself.  I was a  bike mechanic at a young age.  Got it from my dad’s genes.  He was very mechanically oriented.  Nice trip down memory lane.  Have a nice day, or night everyone.

The last time it had been redone was when I was 21, my dad asked me for money to buy some kind of siding that reminded me of roofing shingles only it was suppose to resemble bricks.  He said he was getting too old to keep painting the house.  Well that was well over 40 years ago.  So yes the old girl looks great.

I’ll just say that it does give a senior citizen a nice feeling to see that the newer owners have upgraded my old homestead.  I have had just great memories growing up there.  Glad the current owners seem to like it too.

Summer’s here and that brings back memories of the pool at 22nd Street Ormsby Pool.  The rec center and pool are there now but look different.  The pool configuration has changed.  Back in my good old young days that pool was just a rectangle shape.  The deep end had a diving board,  the low water started about 3 feet.

One could see the dusty street.  No one could take towels out.  We were restricted to time for girls, time for boys, then they had family time and adult time swims in the evening.  We’d line up in mass, back then no one except the Arcade Theatre had air conditioning.   Pool Time was a premium.   We started going down to the pool when we were about 6 or 7 years old.   Several of us would walk down together.  Things were seemingly different then.  For the most part, they were safer.  Girls had to wear bathing caps.  What a pain to remember them.  If you wanted to swim, you had to have one.  Well, I really didn’t swim as much as doggy paddle.  Noreen was trying to teach me to swim, she could swim underwater.  Boy did I admire that.  She also like to stay out and lay in the sun.   I always got sun burnt.  I think I did this to be with my friends.

Another place our families went to often was a place called “Mineral Beach” .   Can’t quite remember where it was located, but did I love piling up in the car with suits, towels, grills and food for a day at the beach:  Ken, me, Mom, Dad and Rose in our car.  Jimmy, Noreen and her parents in their car.

The Oliver Bath House was originally built to serve the local community when there were not showers or bath tubs.  People could go there and shower, take a swim and relax from the work a day world of the steel mills.  It’s been there for years and years.  Amazing it has out lasted the steel mills.  Great place…maybe I’ll visit it one day and take another swim.

Getting dressed up too I guess was okay, but boy do I remember the door to door trick or treat. Too their was always a Halloween Parade on Carson Street.  Sometimes we would go and look.  Larkins Way…..I remember people coming and dropping their kids off by car.  I guess some neighborhoods were better than others for Trick or Treating.

South Side was always the BEST!

Happy Happy Halloween to Everyone.

South Side Sallhy

Well here is my segue to South Side Memories.

I love rocks a lot of different kinds.  I brought them home from various places like concrete gravel mixtures, the Basin, the Quarry limestone, calcite…but back then I didn’t know what they were called.  I even loved to go to the Basin and just stare at the hillside, cracks in the rocks wondering if there was something valuable inside.  Maybe arrowheads, fossils, or something.  I had heard somewhere when I was little that a diamond was made up of carbon under pressure.  So I thought if I took a piece of coal and put it under some heavy rocks it would turn into a diamond maybe in a month or so.  Of course I was little and my sense of time didn’t match mother nature’s geological clock for the formation of a diamond.  Oh well, now I am just like everyone else and am lucky, if I have something in a ring even totally less than a half a carat.  Oh the memories and fantasies of childhood.